Developing adaptation measures in forestry is an urgent task because the forests regenerated today will have to cope with climate conditions that may drastically change during the life of the trees in the stand. This paper presents a comprehensive review of potential adaptation options in forestry in Europe based on three pillars: a review of the scientific literature, an analysis of current national response strategies, and an expert OPEN ACCESSForests 2011, 2 962 assessment based on a database compiled in the COST Action ECHOES (Expected Climate Change and Options for European Silviculture). The adaptation measures include responses to both risks and opportunities created by climate change and address all stages of forestry operations. Measures targeted to reduce vulnerability to climate change may either aim to reduce forest sensitivity to adverse climate change impacts or increase adaptive capacity to cope with the changing environmental conditions. Adaptation measures mitigating drought and fire risk such as selection of more drought resistant species and genotypes are crucial. For adaptation to be successful it is of the utmost importance to disseminate the knowledge of suitable adaptation measures to all decision makers from the practice to the policy level. The analysis of the ECHOES database demonstrates that this challenge is well recognized in many European countries. Uncertainty about the full extent of climate change impacts and the suitability of adaptation measures creates a need for monitoring and further research. A better understanding of how to increase adaptive capacity is also needed, as well as regional vulnerability assessments which are crucial for targeting planned adaptation measures.

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Forest fires are an integral part of the ecology of the Mediterranean Basin; however, fire incidence has increased dramatically during the past decades and fire is expected to become more prevalent in the future due to climate change. Fuel modification by prescribed burning reduces the spread and intensity potential of subsequent wildfires. We used the most recently published data to calculate the average annual wildfire CO2 emissions in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain following the IPCC guidelines. The effect of prescribed burning on emissions was calculated for four scenarios of prescribed burning effectiveness based on data from Portugal. Results show that prescribed burning could have a considerable effect on the carbon balance of the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector in Mediterranean countries. However, uncertainty in emission estimates remains large, and more accurate data is needed, especially regarding fuel load and fuel consumption in different vegetation types and fuel layers and the total area protected from wildfire per unit area treated by prescribed burning, i.e. the leverage of prescribed burning.

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In European forests, carbon storage has increased uninterruptedly during the last 60 years, but the contribution of multiple factors affecting the carbon dynamics is not clear. The main aim of this research was to study effects of changes in land-use, age-structure and management on carbon dynamics of European forests. The specific research tasks were: i) to reconstruct the age-structure of European forests beginning in 1950, by combining available national inventory data with state-of-the-art backcasting, and to study how the mean forest age has changed since the 1950´s (Paper I); ii) to evaluate the role of afforestation on the development of mean forest age and effects of changes in forest area and structure (both age-structure and age/volume relationship) on the development of forest carbon stocks in two European case study countries (Paper II); iii) to quantify the effects of rotation length on the carbon stocks of forests (trees, soil) and wood products, and to estimate the effects of changing rotation length on climate change mitigation (Paper III), and iv) to quantify the average CO 2 emissions from wildfires in Mediterranean countries, and estimate the potential of prescribed burning to mitigate CO 2 emissions (Paper IV). Results show that in European forests, the share of old forests (>100 years) has decreased from 21% in 1950 to 16% in 2010, and the mean age has decreased from 62 to 59 years (Paper I). However, there exists large variation in these results at country level. In two case study countries, Finland and Czech Republic, the development of mean age was affected by afforestation, although it did not change the observed trend of mean age. In both countries, the increase of mean growing stock volume had a larger effect on the increase of forest biomass carbon stock than afforestation (Paper II). In this work, it was also found that the average carbon stocks of tree biomass could be increased by increasing the rotation length. However, this may in some cases decrease carbon stocks of soil and wood products (Paper III). In Mediterranean countries, the use of prescribed burning could also decrease the emissions from forest fires, affecting considerably also the carbon balance of the LULUCF sector (Paper IV). Despite the uncertainties related to employed data and models, this work provided valuable insights on the effects of changes in land-use, age-structure and management on the carbon dynamics of European forests. In overall, the increase of forest carbon stocks can be largely explained by the smaller harvests compared to forest growth, but the contribution of different factors varies significantly between the countries. Findings of this work call for more systematic and accurate estimation of the carbon dynamics and balance of European forests, and factors explaining them, in order to better estimate and utilize the possibilities offered by European forests for climate change mitigation.